Putting It All Into Words or Paint

I have had a hard time blogging about Total Alignment. On one hand its that I need to weed through the hundreds of pictures from my trip. Make those decisions what to show, what to talk about. On the other hand how do you put this experience into words at all.

For now I think I will show you some of the paintings I created. You can also look at the pics that Connie at DirtyFootprints Studio posted. Here is the link to see a little bit of what Total Alignment was like.

This first one is about a character that I will be writing about in  November, she shape shifts into a raven. I wrote words on the piece to encourage me.

In this piece I attempted to go looser or freer in my approach. I had no preconceived ideas, just kept layering on the paint I loved making this.

At Connie's suggestion I tried to look at a painting in view of my dyeing experience. So I started with warm colors in a stripe pattern. This was vertical at first and I thought it looked like all the scenery of Sedona so I turned it around. I used oil pastel to draw in some of the rocks.

I had a lot of color on my palette so I continued with the same color scheme. I see this as one of Sedona's many vortexes.




















This one is still a WIP. I plan to put it back on my painting wall and work in some imagery on their dresses.

This one is my favorite, I so love layering colors and using fun tools to change the way paint looks.  Every time I look at this I see something different.

I played with photographing it.

Over and over and it was easy to find all those sweet spots.

When you take micro shots of a piece amazing things can happen. This one is from the second painting.

I know this guy is watching out for me.

This was my last piece and its a memory painting. When we took one of our walks there was this tree that many of us sat it. It was a special place and I loved creating a painting around it. It is more vibrant in person.

Don't you just love this little me?

This week I started DEEP, Connie's second course in the Fearless Painting Process. Here is my painting table all set up with paint and tools.  I plan on using up all this miscellaneous paint I have. Some was given to me and some I bought for one purpose or another and just never used. I am hoping to empty some of these jars during the next month.

This is my first piece, it is 35 X 46, the biggest I have ever painted. We were to think about Joy as we painted, as a  result I see a lot imagery of things I like. I see the cup as the cup of life, it holds all those wonderful things in my life.  I am not sure where the elephant comes in. I do like elephants and have been drawn to Ganesh lately so that must be it.  In intuitive fearless painting you never  know what will appear in a painting. I am loving working this way.

Finding the Sweet Spot

Yesterday Sarah and I took a trip to Logan, Utah to visit the Hobby Lobby.  We do not have one here.  They sell Copic Markers in open stock and that is what she uses in her art.  I did manage to come home with a couple things too. The new crow stamp helped me to finish this page. 

My friend Kim the Queen of Arts is always talking about "the sweet spot" in her journal pages and I have just never seen that in mine till now.  I think this page has several sweet spots.   I think the crow area is one and the face too.  It really is fun looking for them.

Would you believe there is no paint on this page?  Color was applied using soft pastels.  Then I added a working fixative before layering on stamps and gel pens. I used the Kindness stamp becaue I was thinking about how kind all my blogging friends are. I have recieved some beautiful flags and gifts to help me during this time. You ladies are just wonderful.


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I came home with some new embossing folders to use in my cuttlebug machine.  So of course I had to play with them right away.

This is a sample with regular card stock. You can see how cool this embossing looks.











This sample is using card stock with a white core. You may not be able to see it in the picture but some of the white is showing through.











So then I sanded the paper to reveal just a little bit more.  Depending on the color of paper I think this could be a great affect to age the paper.















This darker blue sample was made on white paper and I put stamping ink inside the embossing folder and then put it through the cuttlebug. I love the look.  I used a Ranger Adirondak stamp pad in denim. I think next time I may try using more than one color of ink.













Just thought I would show you my wonderful new lawn chair. We bought it several months ago when we were in Missoula and I have just started using it. The whole bottom is mesh so its really cool in the heat. It has a drink holder and tray on the side and an attached bottle opener and can see it has a built in pillow. It is made by Kelty a company that makes backpacking gear. I really can relax in this chair.